A family broken
by Wormtail96
Summary: I always wondered what have happened to Coraline's parents if she by choice, stayed in the other world. How would have their lives changed if their daughter was not there when they came home that day?


**A family broken  
**

_What if Coraline decided to stay in the other world…?_

* * *

Charlie and Mel Jones entered their apartment in the Pink Palace. It was dusk, around six o'clock and the married couple were worn from a busy day. Charlie had to drop off the latest issue of the gardening catalogue he and his wife were paid to type up for a living and Mel had to do some shopping for groceries and a school uniform for their daughter, Coraline Jones.

"Coraline, we're home." Mel called as they entered the apartment removed their outdoor coats.

There was no response.

"Coraline?" Mel called again, but was met yet again with silence. She looked back at Charlie with a look of confusion.

"Maybe she's asleep." Charlie offered, hanging his coat, or rather brown blazer up onto the coat peg.

"She wouldn't be at this hour. I'll go check."

Mel went upstairs and checked her daughter's room -- no sign of her. It was then that she genuinely felt concerned.

She went downstairs and up to her husband and shook her head, saying "She's not up in her room either."

Charlie also been feeling concerned and put his finger to his chin in thought. "Well…maybe she's at Miss Spink and Miss Forcible's apartment downstairs?"

"Probably."

He turned around and went to the door. "I'll go check, but maybe she should still check here."

"Sure…alright."

Charlie went out the door and Mel was left alone standing in the hallway. She turned around and went into the living room and then the kitchen. But still, she did not find her daughter.

"Coraline?! Coraline!!" Mel beckoned twice again, growing slowly more and more worried. Something seemed wrong. Very wrong.

"Coraline…?"

* * *

Three years later…

"One please, Claude…"

It was called 'The grey goat', a seedy below ground level tavern, one often visited by the scum, be they male of female of Ashland, Oregon, USA.

Sitting in the quiet tavern in front of the counter was a women, now in her mid-thirties. She wore a tan trench coat that looked old and a little mistreated over what looked like dark blue overalls that one who worked at a factory would be wearing.

"Here you go, Addie." Clause the bartender planted a small cold open bottle labelled 'Russian Vodka' on the counter in front of her. "Straight from Russia itself.

"Thank you." She put to the bottle to her mouth and took a large drink from it.

"Whoa, take it easy there." Claude cautioned, looking a little surprised by the woman, whom he called Addie taking such a big gulp. "That's some strong stuff."

The woman put the bottle down and lowered her head solemnly. "I need it. It's that time of year again."

"You never tell anyone about it, Addie." Claude said to her in concern, resting his arms on the counter. "Maybe if you talked about it…we could help."

The woman sat there in silence for a moment or two before sighing heavily, "It might surprise you, Clause, but I wasn't always working in the factory."

"I ain't surprised. Someone as smart as you shouldn't be working there."

"You'll understand when you learn what happened to me." She took the bottle of Russian vodka again and drank from it before continuing, "I used to have a pretty good life. I worked as a writer and editor of a gardening catalogue, I was married to a loving husband and…we had a kid. A sweet little girl."

"So…something bad happened, huh?"

"…yeah."

"So what…you know?"

There was a pause and she drank her vodka once again. She needed the relaxed feeling she was experiencing right now.

"Our little girl…she disappeared."

"Oh…" Realisation now dawning upon his face, Claude waved his hand apologetically. "Hey, I'm sorry. I understand if you don't wanna--"

"No, no, it's fine. This is something I've wanted to get off my chest for a long time now." She pushed a lock of her askew black hair away from in front of her face. Her face was dirty, her hair was messy -- she was in a serious need of a wash. "We'd just moved here to Ashland. My husband dropped off the latest catalogue, I'd done some shopping and when we returned home she was no where to be found. We called the police but those morons couldn't find here, no one could."

"What do you think happened to her?"

"Some think she was kidnapped, but no…I think she just…ran away." This time she took a lighter shakier sip of her drink. "We never spent much time with her -- we were always too busy with our work. She must have felt lonely and neglected."

Claude looked confused, mainly for the woman's possible reason for her daughter's disappearance. "Yeah, but…surely that's not reason to just run away. I mean, it's not like you didn't wanna spend time with her, right?"

She looked up at him, rings now formed under her eyes. "Of course, I did. I loved that little girl. We spend weeks, months looking for her but we found nothing. Police, neighbours, so many of people helped us look for, but it was no use." She rubbed her closed eyes with her thumb and index finger. "When everyone, including us eventually gave up, me and my husband had no idea what to do next. We didn't try for another child, it was too soon and too painful. Even if we changed our minds, it would have been too late by then. It wasn't long before my marriage crumbled to pieces. We couldn't work on the catalogues anymore so we quit and struggled to find work." She slapped her own forehead in self-loathing. "What were we thinking?! It was the stupidest thing to do during a recession." After taking a long sigh she continued, tightening her grip on the bottle. "I began drinking and since no money was coming in we had to move out of our apartment and into one of those old dirty ones in downtown."

Meanwhile, Claude put out a glass and poured himself a drink of beer. "I'm really sorry to hear that, Addie."

The dirty woman leaned backward to stretch her stiff back and proceeded with her story, "My drinking got worse and my husband and I started arguing everyday, until one day…he went out the door with his stuff. We got divorced." She drank some more. "I changed my name back to Adolfa von Krump -- I hated it but I needed to start over. After a few months on the doll, I eventually landed a job at the factory. It's dead-end but it pays the rent."

Claude finished drinking and licked his lips. "Any luck finding a boyfriend?"

"No. I have men over a lot of the time, but it's just for action -- nothing else. And now, it's three years today since my little girl went missing" The woman, now known as Adolfa tried to take another sip only to realise the bottle was now empty. She then looked down at her watch, before getting up. "I gotta go. I got a guy coming over tonight and I need to get some serious sleep and take a shower before tomorrow. We're gonna be working nine hours tomorrow. I'll catch you later, Claude."

"Alright…" As Adolfa started making her way over to the door, Claude looked over at her and asked, "Hey, Addie, what was your little kid's name, anyway?"

Adolfa looked back at him briefly. She answered him dully before leaving through the door,

"Coraline."

"That's a nice name."

* * *

**(A/N) I've always wanted to do this. I enjoyed writing it. I might redo it at some point if I come up some better ideas to add on. Please do read and review.**


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